Sick Once Again
by shaemichelle
Summary: If Harry's stickler boss sends him home, he might really be contagious. But it's not the cold that lands him in the hospital, it's the mysterious illness that threatens to kill.Can Hermione figure it out before time runs out? Warning:Bromance, Harry/Bill


(Disclaimer: I don't own or claim any part of the HP universe, it belongs to Miss JK Rowling, and her publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury, Penguin and Scholastic, along with their respective shareholders and branch/mother companies.)

* * *

(The medical plot [ie, symptoms, tests and medicines] are based on a HOUSE, MD episode: the third of season one, Occam's Razor. The medical plot belongs to Fox Enterprises and/or creator David Shore and/or writers of the show/episode.)

* * *

"Off from work?" Bill asked, coming home to find Harry lying on their bed, the Muggle telly running commercials.

"Not by choice," Harry said, smiling at him, looking adorable in his grey t-shirt and black flannels. "I went in and they said I was contagious, because of my cough and fever. He even gave me some Muggle cold meds."

"Really?" Bill asked, tossing his own coat over an armchair and sitting beside his small lover, kissing his neck.

Harry made an affirmative noise, playing along as he enjoyed Bill's ministrations, continuing; "With the fever and all... Oh!"

"Oh, what?" he said, nibbling along Harry's collar, gently biting the sensitive spot just above a burn scar.

"You are wearing entirely too many clothes," Harry growled, pulling off Bill's own shirt, as Bill lowered his jeans. As Bill tugged at Harry's boxers, he leaned in to kiss Harry and was surprised when Harry halted him.

"If Carp let me off work, I might actually make you sick..."

"No worries. I have almost no interest in kissing you," Bill said, moving down on Harry, kissing his stomach, chest and collarbone.

"Good..." Harry groaned, grinding his fists into the sheets of the unmade bed. Bill sat up, and Harry followed, trying to kiss Bill's neck.

He was slammed back into the mattress by Bill's playfully rough hands, Bill throwing a leg over him, kissing and bitting his neck once again.

Bill pressed against Harry's entrance, making both men gasp. Soon, Bill was moving against Harry, both moaning in excitement.

The cup full of pens on the bedside table wobbled, moving closer and closer to the edge in time with Bill's thrusts, as were the two men. The pens fell, crashing to the ground as the lovers orgasmed simultaneously.

Somehow, in the flurry of violent thrusts, rolls and pushes, they ended up at the end of the bed, Harry on top of Bill, arms shaking in a post-orgasmic glow, smiling at Bill.

Harry collapsed on top of him, lying still on his shoulder.

"Harry," Bill murmured after a few moments, glancing at the clock. "If we're going to Mum's for dinner, we need to shower."

His lover lay still, not moving, or giving a playful groan the way he had last time they had a quickie before a family dinner.

"Harry," he said with a laugh. "Harry, come on... Harry?" Bill pushed his small lover off, rolling him, now concerned. Why was he so still? He was never still, not even when he was sleeping. It wasn't in his nature. His eyes stayed closed, his face curiously blank.

"Harry!" he called, shaking him. What was going on?

*

Bill found himself in a Muggle hospital, Hermione as a Healer-slash-doctor. Only she would realize that half-bloods died every year of Muggle diseases, left untreated at wizarding hospitals, and choose to apprentice as a Healer and then go to Muggle medical school with a double specialty in infectious disease and cardiology.

Harry lay in front of him in hospital pyjamas, shaking, a hand fisted in the material at his belly, trying to hide pain. His breathing was shaky at best, a fever running high enough to make him shiver. All Bill could do was hold his hand.

Across the hall, he could see Hermione talking with four other doctor-Healers. They surrounded a white-board, one listing Harry's symptoms; rash, fever, nausea, cough, abdominal pain, and low b.p., whatever that was.

He had to wait, wait with Harry to find out what was wrong.

*

Hermione ran a thing called an ultrasound on Harry's chest—which was still to thin—and watched the palpations of his heart on a grainy screen.

"So, we'll be doing another test later that will tell us if your pituitary glands are working properly, and this is just a cardiogram to make sure there's no arrhythmia."

"Glands? What does that mean?" Harry asked, watching his heart with fascination.

"We have a few theories," Hermione hedged, freezing an image with the press of a button.

"So you don't know."

"Bill," Harry reprimanded. He bristled, needing Harry to understand his worry.

"I'm just saying," he protested from his spot at the end of the bed. "If she knew she'd be treating you, not testing you."

"Yeah, well, that's the way it works," Harry snapped. "You have to know what it is before you make it better." He looked away, then back at BIll. "Sorry, I just... I hate hospitals. I didn't mean to snap."

"I'm putting you on general antibiotics, since this is probably a infection of some sort. Get some rest, OK, Harry?" Their friend swiped his slightly sweaty brow lovingly, standing and rolling the ultrasound out to a nurse.

She left, and Bill moved and kissed Harry's forehead swiftly.

"I have a question for her, I'll be right back," he said, going out the door to the hallway. Bill chased Hermione down the hall. "Dr Granger!" She stopped, turning to smile at him.

"Bill, what's up?"

"I, um, just... Look, Mione, I was wondering—I mean, before this happened, we were having sex." Hermione blushed faintly, but interrupted nonetheless.

"If your wondering if you could've gotten whatever he has, don't. It's not an STD, we ran a full scan, and not infectious as far as-"

"No, I'm wondering if maybe I did this to him. I was kind of... Rough. I mean, if I ruptured something, or if the orgasm hurt his heart--"

"No, Bill, I don't... Eighteen-year-old men don't die of sex, it's not like you rode him to death. Unless drugs were involved, it's not diagnostically relevant."

*

"How you doing, babe?" I asked, stroking his forehead as he drifted awake. "And don't lie and say 'I'm fine', because i doubt you really are."

"My chest feels weird," he said vaguely, coughing. He jumped as the door slid open with a bang.

"We need to stop the drugs, now," a doctor said, billowing into the room ahead of Hermione. Bill stood, unwilling to let the strange doctor near Harry without Hermione's OK.

"What's--?" he began, sensing Harry's small panic at the doctor's urgent tone.

"Excuse me, sir. Your friend is on a downward spiral I can stop now by removing his IV." Bill stepped aside, letting the man through. Hermione went to the other side a very confused Harry's bed.

"It's too soon to know if they're having an effect--"

"They're having an effect. His creatine's rising, kidneys are shutting down, his lungs are filling with fluid and his blood pressure is dropping, fast. The treatment's killing him."

*

"Now it's a sinus infection and hypothyroidism?" Bill asked, wishing Hermione would drop the IV full of medicines. Last time she hooked him up, Harry had nearly died. He was still coughing, and none of his other symptoms have gone away. They might have to put him on dialysis, or robotic kidneys, to save his real ones.

"My uncle has hypothyroidism," Harry put in, looking away from his needle-filled arm at Bill. "But we're not blood related, he married my aunt."

"Doesn't matter, he doesn't have it like this. One of these is an artificial thyroid medication, that should stop that. The other is a more targeted antibiotic, for the sinus infection."

"Two things are wrong with me?" Harry asked, looking back at her now that his IV was back in his arm.

"Bad luck, huh?" she asked with a smile. "Don't worry, Harry. You'll be better and out soon."

"I hope so," Harry said.

*

Bill gripped Harry's hand, smiling at him. Harry smiled back, then yanked his hand away to cover a cough.

"Still coughing?" Hermione asked, concerned.

"Yeah," Harry hedged. "But my fever's gone, and my rash is going away."

"I see," Hermione said, flipping through the chart clipped to the end of the bed. She twisted her neck, a nervous habit of hers, scribbling on the chart.

"Is everything OK?" Bill asked, not moving from his spot at Harry's side. Why was Hermione looking like that?

"Just ordering some tests," she said. "Absolutely nothing to worry about."

She left, leaving the chart behind.

"That's not good, is it, Bill?" Harry asked nervously.

"She's probably just making sure your kidneys are OK, or something. Double checking, you know," he lied. It probably wasn't good, and Bill knew it.

"Have you rang your folks to let them know what's going on?" Harry asked, trying to change the subject.

"No, I owled them though. They said they'd come by as soon as Dad finishes his shift," Bill said, grabbing the bed control to lower Harry into more horizontal position. "And they'll Floo Ron and Ginny, get them out of boot camp to come see you."

"It's their last week before the season starts," Harry complained of the two professional Quidditch players. "They shouldn't bother."

"Ron's your best friend, and Ginny's pretty damn close, too," Bill said, ignoring his protests. They both heard the unspoken meaning in pulling the two out. They had to come now, before Harry ran out of time. When his lover was completely flat, Bill pulled at the covers, tucking Harry in. "Get some rest, love. You'll have visitors later."

*

"What the hell do you mean, 'you were wrong'?" Bill demanded. He stood outside Harry's room with Dr Watson, his lover inside, talking with Mr and Mrs Weasley.

"I mean I tested Harry for hypothyroidism, and he came up negative," the doctor said. "It doesn't matter if he's getting 'better' on the treatment, it'll end up boxing his kidneys and liver, and he'll die. It's not two illnesses, it can't be. It has to be something else!"

"Dr Watson," Hermione said, coming up behind them with a paper, probably another lab.

"He tested--" Watson began, interrupted by Hermione.

"Neg for hypothyroidism, I know. But it's not an infection either," she said.

"What!" Bill demanded. "From the beginning you all said viral infection of the heart, or liver, or kidney. Now you're saying it can't be an infection?"

"Yes, I'm sorry, Bill. We were wrong, very wrong. His white blood cell count is dropping, dropping fast. His immune system is shot. We need to get him into a clean room."

*

Bill waited outside the door of the entrance to the clean room. Two male doctors, Watson and Bailey, were inside the chamber in yellow sterile robes, blue masks and gloves. Harry sat in a wheelchair with them, ready to be de-germed so he could go into the sterile, cold white-walled room alone, where Bill wouldn't be able to hold his hand, stroke his hair, or make sure he was calm and not scared.

He hated this. Why couldn't the doctors get this right? Even the magical tests showed nothing wrong, meaning Muggle trial-and-error was the only way. The doors to the clean room slid open and Harry hobbled to the bed—the wheelchair too germy to go with him—with the help of doctors.

Bill watched through the glass, his youngest brother and his sister on either side of him.

"That sucks," Ron said. "I finally get here and they put him in a bubble."

"Yeah," Ginny said softly. "I wonder how scared he is. That whole fiasco at St Mungo's wasn't that long ago."

The fiasco at St Mungo's was only about four months ago. Harry went in to get a huge grease burn healed, the result of a tipped deep-fryer in the kitchen where he worked. His boss's six-year-old daughter tipped it, and he pushed her out of the way of boiling grease. She needed three or four stitches from where she hit a counter, but Harry had been far worse off.

Harry might say it wasn't that bad, but Bill knew Harry had been in a lot of pain. When Bill met him at St Mungo's, alerted by Colleen, another chef, Harry's skin had been still bubbling with the heat of the grease. It was the only time Bill had ever seen Harry cry.

After some skin graphs to help fix the scarring, he had stayed the night at St Mungo's to make sure his skin healed right, and his food was poisoned by someone, presumably a still-at-large Death Eater.

"If he gets sick now," Bill said suddenly as they watched the doctors hook up yet another IV, "he'll die."

"How sick?" Ron asked.

"If he gets a cold," Bill clarified, venting his fear on the only people available, "he'll die."

*

"He'll be alright, sweetie," his mum murmured to him. She rubbed his back as he leant against the glass wall. The doctors were now debating lymphoma, some type of cancer. Hermione stood inside with Harry, two needles on a tray with her.

She had left the scratchy intercom on, and Bill could hear everything they said inside the clean room.

"The bone marrow will help show us what's wrong," she explained through the mask. "OK, I'm going to push the needle into your hipbone, and take some of it out." She pressed a needle into him, and Harry barely winced.

"That's not so bad," he said. Bill breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't in pain—Hermione said it would be bad. She gave a broken laugh through her mask.

"That's just the anesthetic. The biopsy needle, it's a bit bigger. Harry... Take a deep breath, this is going to hurt... A lot."

Bill watched Harry, lying on his stomach with his hip exposed, as he looked up at Bill, for reassurance. Moments after the needle pierced his skin, Harry gasped, fisting the sheets and turning his face away from Bill in attempt to hide his pained face. His whole body tensed, and Bill could hear his whimpers from here, ill hidden in the sheets. Bill took a step forward to help him, and his hand hit the glass.

"Marrow makes the blood cells. We'll just take a little bit out, take a peek under a microscope," she said through her mask, ignoring his pain like a pro. "Hopefully find a viral infection or a fibrosis, something to explain why your WBC is so low. We'll be one step closer to an answer."

She finished, pulling the needle out. "What if you don't find one?" Harry asked softly as she placed the sample on the tray. "I can't stay in here forever." Hermione looked up at Bill, who honestly thought he'd faint.

Was Harry losing hope? Was he not strong enough to beat himself?

*

Harry sat on the floor by the couch, his acoustic guitar in his practiced hands, idly strumming. Bill felt a surge of jealousy, the guitar in his lover's arms named Delilah. Why did the guitar have a name, let alone one so decidedly feminine? It was not a she, and the idea that Harry could hold anyone else but Bill and look so content bothered him.

Harry finally looked up as Bill placed the grocery bag on the counter of the kitchen-living room. Bill had been in Egypt the past two weeks, and had Floo-ed straight to the grocers, knowing full-well Harry hadn't shopped in the time he'd been gone. Bill was a tad surprised Harry hadn't leapt up to attack and kiss him the second he walked in. What was the younger boy playing?

"You're jealous again," he smirked, slow chords floating past Bill's ears. "Jealous of my guitar..."

"I hate the way you hold that thing," he said, flopping on the couch above Harry to avoid the sarcastic gaze. Harry chuckled, changing the music, simply to annoy Bill, looking down at his leather-tipped left hand, watching his deft fingers form notes. He hated this song, and Harry knew it.

"A thousand miles seems pretty far," he sang softly, the words of a Muggle-song Bill half-recognized. "But they've got planes and trains and cars, I'd walk to you if I had no other way... Our friends would all make fun of us, and we'll just laugh along because we know that none of them have felt this way... Delilah, I can promise you, that by the time we get through, the world will never, ever be the same... And you're to blame..."

"You named her that just to annoy me," he accused. Harry shook his head, obviously laughing to himself as he hummed the next verse. "You played that to annoy me then."

"Nah," the younger man said, shrugging his shoulder flippantly. "I named her Delilah because I couldn't think of another man I wanted to hold." He looked up at Bill, smiling lovingly as he began the song from where he started.

"Bill, you know, I can promise you, that by the time we get through, my world will never ever be the same... And you're to blame..."

Bill wrapped his hand around the neck of the guitar, stopping the music abruptly. "What?" Harry asked, leaning Delilah against the coffee table, turning to face Bill.

"You're too damn cute when you play, lover boy, too damn cute."

"Hm," Harry said, kneeling in front of the couch, running his hands under Bill's dress shirt. "How am I cute?"

"The way your fingers move, knowing just where to hit in order to make the right sound," Bill murmured after a long moment, after nearly forgetting they were having a conversation. Harry smiled against his neck, pretty well on top of him now. He kissed Bill's pulse point, speeding both of their hearts with Bill's appreciative moan. "Course, your mouth isn't bad either."

"Bill, wake up!" Ginny called, shaking her brother into awareness. "Hermione has news."

"Good news?" he asked, instantly awake. He sat up on the bench he was camped out on, Ron's warm Quidditch jacket sliding off.

"I dunno," she answered, pulling her exhausted brother to his feet. "But let's go see her, OK? You need to be getting more sleep."

"Right. When I'm sure that Harry won't die, I'll have a twelve hour nap."

"Right," she said, rolling her eyes. "No, you won't sleep till he's out of the hospital and in your arms. It's the same with me and Colin. I can't sleep without him because I'm so used to cuddling."

"You're probably right," Bill said, following her to outside Harry's room. "But he'll be home soon so it doesn't matter." They rounded the corner of the hall, towards the clean room. Hermione waited, leaning against the glass, laughing through the intercom with a relieved looking Harry.

"What's going on?" Bill asked. "Is... Did you figure it out?"

"Yeah, we did, Bill. He's bouncing back, for real this time. It was really simple, looking back now," Hermione answered, turning to him from Harry. "He should be out in a day or three."

"What was wrong?" Bill asked, blowing a kiss to Harry, who was grinning so big in his pale face it looked as if his face would crack.

"The cough medicine his boss gave him wasn't cough medicine. He came in an hour ago with the same symptoms," she began. "Turns out his pharmacist screwed up, and gave him gout medicine instead of actual cough stuff, poisoning them both. Mr Carpentier will be better in a day, and Harry will follow soon after."

"I'm getting out of this god-awful hospital!" Harry laughed from his bed. "No offense, Hermione."

"None taken. This place sucks if you're a patient, I understand completely. I'll be back in an hour or so to run your WBC again. That's all we're waiting for, Bill. As soon as his creatine is down and his WBC is up you're good to go."

*

"Welcome home," Bill said, propping open the door for the short man behind him. "I'm glad you're here."

"I'm glad I'm alive," Harry said, yawning. "But right now, I'm glad we have such a soft and comfortable bed. Aren't you?"

"Yep. I could go for a nap," Bill answered, tossing the small duffel bag with his change of clothes from the hospital onto the couch. He followed Harry into the bedroom, the sheets still tangled from their last escapade. He tossed his jeans onto the loveseat by the closet, and crawled into bed beside a hospital issue PJ-adorned Harry.

"You know, I couldn't sleep at the hospital," Harry whispered as he curled up to Bill's larger frame, pressing his cold feet against Bill.

"Hermione had your food and things all screened, there wasn't a chance in hell that guy could poison you again," Bill said, running his hands through Harry's overlong hair. Harry buried his face into his shoulder.

"I couldn't sleep because the beds felt so empty without you there." Bill chuckled at that, wrapping his arms around his still-too-thin lover.

"I love you too."


End file.
